New Year, No Fucks

I NEED Y’ALL TO START PAYING FOR THIS BLOG BECAUSE SHIT IS SO BLEAK AND MY NEXT DISPATCH IS PROBABLY GONNA BE FROM HELL.

I quit my job. So, naturally, I’m watching Under the Tuscan Sun on loop until I throw up. I should get, “Just because you have a sudden urge to weep, that doesn’t mean you’ve made a mistake” tattooed to my back.

Did I tell you I met Diane Lane?

The first thing I said to her was, “UNDER THE TUSCAN SUN CHANGED MY LIFE!”
“That’s great!” She’s so gracious.

Pre-Fuck You

Ringing in 2019

To whoever anonymously sent me a bottle of Veuve Clicquot over Christmas, I appreciate you. Unless you are my boss — in which case, a better gesture would’ve been to stop fucking with my livelihood just because I didn’t validate you. At the very least, pay for my therapy. Bitch.

(P.S. I know it wasn’t anyone who reads this garbage pile of good times because I don’t give out my home address, but thank you all the same)

I flew into New York a little after midnight on December 28. While I was waiting at Baggage Claim, I got a text from Leo’s aunt (who was watching him, Spartacus the Bitch-Fish, and my apartment over the break): “You need to call your super ASAP. Your bathroom ceiling is leaking and there’s water everywhere.”

The next morning, the bathroom ceiling completely collapsed. Well, if that isn’t a big fat metaphor, then I don’t know what a metaphor is. The porter used my towels to clean up all the debris too, which, I’m gonna kill everyone. Then I spent that evening taping around the plywood they nailed to the ceiling to cover the gaping hole so that bugs wouldn’t crawl through the cracks.

“This is New York for you,” I heard the porter tell the super. That it is.

After two weeks of harassment, the building company finally sent someone to fix the hole…along with a bill of a late rent payment. Ain’t that a bitch.

The Breaking Point

My boss will now only be referred to as The Beast.

The Beast was on some next-level shit as soon as she got back from her own vacation. She had HR send me an email recapping our meeting about my performance—a month after the meeting took place—and add in grievances from, legit, a year ago (as in, before even my last official performance review, when none of these grievances were brought up) as additional evidence of my supposed poor performance. For example: that one time when we paid an event consultant $50,000 to do a fucking PowerPoint that I ended up doing anyway. Somehow, somehow, it was still my responsibility. Where my $50,000 check at then??

I emailed HR. [rough recap below]

“Half of the things listed in this email, we didn’t talk about, much less agree to.”
“I know. [The Beast] pretty much wrote the email and told me to send it. To be fair, she did talk to me about them.”
“But we didn’t talk about them together, so this email is an inaccurate reflection of what we discussed.”
“Sorry!”

That evening, as I was putting Leo’s harness on for our evening walk, I collapsed, threw my arms around him, and loud-sobbed, “My butt hurts, Leo! Why does my butt hurt?” (I think when I sit, I carry my weight on my right side, so, my right cheek was feeling a little bruised from the hours I’ve been spending sitting on it, doing work that’s supposedly shit, and yet, lining The Beast’s pockets with it.)

The Moment

I have a healing friend who is the most beautiful person I’ve ever seen with my own two eyes and happens to be equally as beautiful on the inside. She’s a unicorn. So, for all intents and purposes, we’ll just call her Unicorn.

Unicorn and I go on beautiful dates together every once in a blue moon and talk about our dreams. Très romantic.

On our last date, I consulted her about my job, my life, my crisis of perpetual brokehood.

I paraphrase her sagely response:

You know, I stood at the edge of the cliff for a long time. Looking down, I saw jagged rocks, and I thought, “I could easily impale myself and die a horrible, horrible death.” But there is also this beautiful, blue water. I’d like to swim in it.

Swim, or die a horrible, horrible death.

The Fuck You

On Friday, I told The Beast, aka Hannibal Lecter, right after she showered me in shallow praise for doing her work, “I’m leaving.”

“Ok.” *Hannibal Lector smile* “Who are we losing you to?”
“No one. I’m just unhappy here.”
“Oh, ok. Well, I know it’s been really hard for you. I just want the best for you, I really mean it. When are you leaving?”
“In two weeks.”
“Well, given the holiday, it’s a little inconvenient. I would prefer…but I guess you gotta do what you gotta do.”
“I do.”
“Well, I just want the best for you.”

I literally don’t know what to do with myself now. Fun fact: I got into grad school (after an intense month of discussing it with faculty and submitting an application), but the financial aid wasn’t enough to justify going into debt forever, so I’ve deferred. It was a devastating decision, but also a relief. I went to the orientation night the other night to check it out; I don’t know if I’m ready to be the oldest person in the program.

I flirted with buying an Italian villa in Sambuca, Sicily, for €1 (with a million strings attached to it) to live Under the Sicilian Sun, but I would be competing with 38,000 other people, including a NYC businessman who flew to Sicily that very night, “a very rich lady in Dubai,” and a woman who harassed the reporter on social media, who sounds just as desperate as I am, to be honest. To soothe my heartbreak, my Italian friend offered, “I bet they have specific contractors (*wink wink*) that you have to use for the renovations and people knocking on your door for protection money.”

So, the tentative plan is to roadtrip home to California after my lease is up at the end of March, loaf off my family per God’s will, and write daily dispatches about my sad sack-o’-shit life. Honestly, I feel liberated. I feel hopeful, for the first time in a long-ass time.

Life is calling, kids. Things aren’t as terrifying as they seem. Sure, this doesn’t apply to everyone—for some people, things are very terrifying, and real, and heartbreaking, and unfair—but for my peers, at least, most of our fears are in our heads. We’re more capable than we think.

Do I sometimes feel less capable because I can’t touch my toes? Yea, absolutely. But that’s part of my plan, too: to take care of my body so that I don’t die a horrible, horrible death. With a sore ass. Maybe I’ll still get to restore a villa in Italy, even though I don’t know my dick from my elbow when it comes to renovations. Maybe I’ll finally meet someone who thinks my sense of humor is sexy and not gross and will bankroll my lifestyle for the rest of his life, then leave me everything in his will once he inevitably perishes. Or maybe Taika Waititi will stop blocking me on social media long enough to entertain my draft scripts for episodes of the What We Do in the Shadows series (this sentence is only half true, but which half?).

Less than a month into 2019, I am reclaiming my time, and I’m reclaiming my fucks — no longer will I dole them out like Halloween candy to ungrateful little shits with half-assed costumes because their parents hate them. I am whip-smart. I am capable. I am fresh out of fucks.

I’m also an internet-ordained minister in Wisconsin, so suck my dick, rodents.

Post-Script.
Note to my former, former boss: NO. This blog is NOT called “Broke Ass Bitch.” Please put some respect on my name.